§ Mr. Palmerasked the Minister for the Civil Service if he will make a statement giving details of the arrangements for index-linking of pensions in the Civil Service and the comparable arrangements for the nationalised industries.
§ Mr. ChannonPublic service pensions, including those of retired civil servants, are increased under section 59 of the Social Security Pensions Act 1975 by the same amount and at the same time as the additional component of long-term national insurance benefits. There is a variety of arrangements for increasing the pensions of former employees of nationalised industries and other public corporations.
In some cases, there is a statutory obligation to increase pensions under the 1975 Act; in others, the trust deeds of the pension schemes require pensions to be increased as if they were covered by the 1975 Act or to provide full inflation-proofing in some other form; others simply award discretionary increases. In practice, most public sector pensions have been fully inflation-proofed in recent years.